Ending Everything
by PuzzleRaven
Summary: Major Spoilers for Worm. In the aftermath of an Endbringer attack Scion speaks for the second time. And everything gets worse.
1. Prologue

Prologue: 15th May 2011

The video passed one billion views in the first hour. The servers crashed, but by then it had been copied, duplicated, reached the major news networks across the globe. Watched and re-watched, speculation on what it meant, on what had actually happened, was running rampant. Only two things could be known for sure.

For the second time, Scion had spoken.

And Legend had fired.

Leviathan had retreated, it was true. He had paused in that bizarre moment when Scion had ceased his assault on the Endbringer, had turned his expressionless gaze to the top of an office block. That moment when the Triumvirate had paused, Legend and Alexandria looking to that same roof, Eidolon staggering as the tidal wave against his force field abruptly dropped to nothing. And then Scion spoke and Legend fired, obliterating the rooftop and the three storeys below it. Leviathan had reached the edge of the bay by then, dove into the water and near instantly vanished. The water in the city began to drain back to normal levels and the rain began to ease. As Eidolon, battered and befuddled, flew to join his colleagues, Scion watched the space above the rooftops for a heartbeat. Then he was gone. Reports came in later of a school bus saved, a lost child returned, and heroism as usual resumed.

Leaving the world with fifteen seconds of video, leaked from a Ward's camera phone, and a frantic debate over four short words.


	2. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

"'You will help me.'" Dr. Mother said, in a white room somewhere else. "What did it mean by that?" Legend barely heard her. He was staring blankly at the frozen image on the wall, Scion caught mid-speech. It was rare for Cauldron to call a full meeting. This warranted it.

"Who was it talking to?" Eidolon asked, his mask on the table in front of him out. "Legend?"

Legend almost started as he realised they were waiting for him to answer. "No. No, there was something else on that roof."

"I've pulled all the tapes I can find. There are no clear angles on it, but Dragon's cameras gave the best footage and they saw nothing," Doctor Mother said, sceptically.

"It was there," Alexandria said, "I saw it too. It wasn't clear, but it looked like a person, or it was turning into one."

"And then Scion said 'you will help me' and Legend obliterated it," Dr. Mother said to Alexandria, who nodded. "That will be easy for the P.R.T., to spin, at least."

"I have my people on it now. Scion asked for help, Legend helps, Leviathan retreats. Handled correctly it will improve our ratings and reduce the perception of Scion's invulnerability." Alexandria looked at Number Man for confirmation, who nodded once precisely.

"Scion has taken no action to contradict the narrative. The numbers say he will not."

"Make the statement," Dr Mother said, as her bodyguard shifted slightly in her seat, making a note. "Which brings us to the core issue. Why did Legend fire?" All eyes round the table turned to the hero.

"I –" he stumbled on his words, knowing the table was waiting on him, but without a good answer. "I don't know. I just reacted."

"And if Scion asks for help, you provide it?" Eidolon asked cynically. Legend bit back his rising anger, tried to come up with an answer that did not mean throwing in their faces that if they had told him the truth…

"He wasn't asking me," Legend said carefully, his voice cutting despite his best attempt to keep it level. He hardly cared, letting the bitterness show. "And all we know there's only one thing that Scion would want help with."

"Removing his allies would seem wise," Dr. Mother said, completely unruffled, "but are we certain that attack wasn't what he wanted?"

"Scion calls something and you think that thing would have answered 'Fuck you'?" Eidolon suggested bluntly. The green-clad hero had been on edge since the start of the meeting. Legend quietly suspected the man was jealous. Eidolon was undisputedly the most powerful cape on the planet, but it was Legend who everyone was discussing right now; Legend, who Scion had chosen to speak to. With Eidolon's insecurities, that had to grate, but after what he had just learned Legend had no sympathy for him.

"We don't know." Dr. Mother was still calm. "We don't know what the target was." Legend drew breath, and looked at Alexandria. They had discussed this before arriving, but it made it no easier to say. He braced himself.

"I think it was another entity. It reminded me of the dead one. I thought if it had any chance to gain power at all, we didn't stand a chance."

"I think he was correct," Alexandria said, backing him up before anyone else could speak. "You didn't see it. There was something half-formed there, like the thing on the bottom level." There was a stir at the table.

"Is it possible that ours-" Legend shook his head, not waiting for Dr. Mother to finish.

"No. We checked." It had been the first thing they had done, still battered and soaked from fighting Leviathan. Seeing the flesh garden twisted, silent, and dead, had brought Legend the first relief he had felt since he fired. Alexandria had felt the same way. One god-like entity trying to destroy humanity was quite enough.

"So another then, if we assume you are both correct."

"If you're not, Legend just obliterated some poor Case 53," Eidolon said, rather snidely, but Dr. Mother took the comment in stride.

"No Case 53s or Cauldron capes were in the region. I checked the records."

"So Legend fired on an unknown something, possibly another entity, and yet Scion hasn't acted against us," Alexandria said, "so we might have done exactly what he wanted."

"Or it isn't dead," Number Man suggested, and there was a hush. "An agent in the area reported in before the meeting. At the exact time the disturbance began, his second timeline collapsed. Issues have been reported by other Thinkers. I myself noted a sudden and unprecedented shift in the numbers, and they have not reverted." For a moment Legend considered if he should have fired sooner, and realised it would likely have made no difference. Doctor Mother continued as he pondered.

"Alexandria, manage the P.R.T. The Chief Director will be needed more than Alexandria."

"Send my double to Brockton Bay then. The day after an Endbringer attack, we need Alexandria to be visible, and rescue efforts are well within her abilities. Legend, you'll be needed at Brockton Bay as well," Alexandria commented, standing up. Legend stood, tense.

"I agree. I'll arrange for our assets in the area to monitor for anything, and see what less-official resources can be brought to bear." Doctor Mother said. "If you all have your assignments-"

"And that's it?" Legend said, his voice stone-cold.

"Do we have time to discuss anything else now?" Doctor Mother asked, quite calmly.

"If I find out you've lied to me about anything else, we're done." He struggled to keep his voice level, not to let the anger take control. Shouting and raging would be too easily dismissed by the monsters, his colleagues, in front of him. "I will go public with everything."

"Now is not the time for the Triumvirate to be publicly divided," Alexandria said, just as coldly.

"So you said. That is the only reason I haven't already left." He could feel his hands clenching into fists, his power rising as it presented options to strike at her. Eidolon was watching carefully, doubtless trading powers for something to take him down. If he hit first, he could take the green-clad so-called hero out before the power had reached full potential. But this was David, his colleague, who had had his back through fight after fight. He hesitated. "You all knew. And not one of you told me."

"We don't have time for -" Doctor Mother started.

"Shut up." Alexandria cut her off without even looking at her. The superheroine removed her helmet for the first time since the fight, setting it down on the table with a quiet click, and met Legend's gaze with one real and one artificial eye.

"We needed one of us who didn't know. We needed someone who still hoped so they could inspire it in others. If you had known the final enemy was Scion, could you have been the inspiration for so many? Knowing they were just going to die, could you have recruited and trained them?"

"Every. Endbringer. Fight." He met her gaze and Alexandria flinched first.

"I am sorry. We should have trusted you." He drew a breath, relaxed.

"No more secrets?"

"We don't have time for them," Doctor Mother said. "Now you know, can we count on you?"

"I shot it, didn't I?" He laughed dryly. If he had known, he could have shot faster, possibly killing it. Having to learn in the field from Scion of all entities, because his friends had not trusted him, had stalled him at the critical moment. The cost of that mistrust could have doomed them all.

"Understood. Remember we need to find the new entity quickly." Doors appeared in the walls as the meeting ended and the conspirators hurried off to their assigned duties.

###

Amy Dallon screamed, jolted out of her exhausted stupor as Carol stamped on the brakes. The roof of the car dented, windshield shattering, as something heavy crashed down on top of it. Tires squealing, the car skidded and fishtailed on the wet street. A black shape, a body, rolled down the cracked glass, across the hood, and catapulted into the road in front of them. The body tumbled through the debris, struck a shattered bollard, and came to an abrupt stop, ominously still. Amy threw her hands up to cushion her injured head as the veering threw her against the window. The car settled, rocking, on its wheels.

"You hit someone?" Amy said incredulously, blinking to clear her bleared vision. Carol shook herself, her knuckles locked white on the steering wheel, staring at the limp body in the street.

"No, there was no one there!" she insisted. Amy was already unbuckling her seat belt. Carol reached across to catch her arm.

"Where are you going?" she demanded, her eyes already picking out the spines and blades that made up parts of the body lying in the road. Light was beginning to build in her hand.

"To offer first aid." Amy pulled out of Carol's grasp and slammed the door on her mother's protest of 'but it might not be safe'. Running across to the body, ignoring the way the blurry world spun, she knelt down and tried to turn it over. There was a risk she'd make the injuries worse but screw it, she was Panacea. Her powers would let her cure any damage she caused, if she was up to healing again.

The crash victim was female, tall, covered in something that might have been plastic, leather, or its skin, she couldn't tell, and as it rolled onto its back the extent of the injuries became clear. They had not been caused by the car. They couldn't have been.

One arm wasn't there, severed at the shoulder with knotted black tendrils of that bizarre skin covering the amputation site. There was no blood seeping from the wound: either the skin was containing it or it had plugged the arteries. The torso and hip looked as though a shark had bitten it, right rib cage gone, lung and kidney missing if this thing had human biology, pelvis on the right gone, and down to the hip joint where more of the bizarre skin was all that held the severed leg to the torso.

"Fuck," she said quietly under her breath. Healing anything while she was exhausted and concussed was unwise, or she would still be back at the hospital. Not healing this though would be a death sentence for the patient.

"Careful." Carol was approaching slowly, a blade of light forming in one hand. "It could be dangerous."

"Endbringer truce," she retorted, taking a perverse delight in Carol's discomfort. Cautiously she laid her fingertips on the black, leather-like, skin. A flood of information rushed into her mind as she used her power. A separate organism, symbiotic and of animal intelligence, lacking even the basic functions of life, unable to sustain it without its partner. Fascinated by the bizarre biology she pressed her fingers closer. The material withdrew obediently beneath her fingers, slipping back under corpse-blue skin. The biology of its partner was mostly human, but hideously injured. Amy could sense the symbiote wrapped around the failing organs, sustaining them. It was similar to a human brain but not, the DNA linked to something in the same way a parahuman's Coronas would be, but in this alien brain there was neither a Corona Pollentia or Corona Gemma. She detected a second symbiote, mingled with the flesh of the left shoulder, nerve fronds digging into the vertebra and merging with the spinal cord. If this was a parahuman, could the symbiotes be serving as the source of power?

"What happened to her?" Carol said, interrupting her thoughts. Amy heard a whisper from the body, puppeteered by its own symbiote.

"Leviathan." Amy repeated the word louder for Carol to hear, suppressing her doubts. Leviathan was a water creature. It simply did not leave burns like these. Before her mother could protest, she reached into the bizarre biology to heal it. Following the pattern of the symbiote's fixes, she turned its mass into new organs, filling out a lung as the symbiote formed the framework.

Somehow the thing was co-operating. As the symbiote sensed what she was doing, it responded, letting her stretch her power in ways she had never considered. Drawing from the energy stored in those twisted strands of DNA, it was generating extra biomass from nowhere, exactly where she needed it. She sculpted the substance, new ribs, a socket for the shattered hip, new veins to reconnect the leg, which was still incredibly alive, an arm regrowing from a cauterised stump. It drew on further stores of energy from other sources stored inside it but not part of it; a gun, a knife, a sword, all made of the same substance. All things that perhaps she could shape. As the arm finished, Amy pulled her hand back, trying not to think about the temptation. That way Nilbog lay.

"Panacea?" Carol was still waiting, but the light in her hand had been replaced by a cellphone. Amy didn't have to ask to know that there was no signal.

"I've done all I can here, but she needs a hospital." Carol nodded immediately. Amy hid her reaction. Carol would have taken any excuse to go back. She had not wanted to leave Dad's bedside. After the hospital roof caved in, the nurses had had to almost throw her out to get her to deal with Amy's injury. After all, what was one injured adopted daughter compared to her husband?

"Is it safe to move her?"

"There's no spinal trauma. If we can get her into the car, it should be alright. Get a blanket." Carol nodded. Carefully Amy folded the patient's arms across her torso, wrapping her legs together in the blanket from the car. "You take her head, I'll get the legs. Lifting on three. One. Two. Three." They lifted the patient together, awkwardly sliding the heavy body on to the back seat. With difficulty they managed to get back into the car. The driver's door barely closed over the bent frame, but with the city in ruins there was no help coming and no way to call for it. When the engine sputtered and started, Amy echoed Carol's sigh of relief.

"Will she recover?" Carol asked, squinting through the cracked windshield as she turned the car round to go back to the hospital.

"I think so. She has unusual biology." Carol scowled, and Amy could guess what she was thinking. A superhero, a publicly known member of New Wave, hitting a villain with their car during an Endbringer truce could be a legal nightmare.

The situation could still be saved, she knew. If they got the victim to a hospital quickly, after Panacea had done her concussed and exhausted best, it could be put down to an accident. Amy was very certain that was why Carol had followed her orders so compliantly. Cynically, she wondered what Carol would have done if there were no witnesses.

She was too tired to think about it, and another thought kept intruding. How, in the middle of the battle against Leviathan, had a cape gone down with burn injuries clearly from a Blaster? If it was accidental fire, it would have been called in. The cape's armband was missing so Dragon would not have recorded it on the monitoring. Someone out there had violated the truce, and that was an unpleasant thought.

###

The entity vaporised the fallen bridge with a single burst of golden light. An obstructive piece of rebar was thrown upwards, clear of the continent on the optimum indicated trajectory. Locating the next rescue on its priority queue it relocated. Its attention was fully occupied on the enhanced simulation it was running. The precisely delivered audible trigger had refined the path to an improved conclusion. That conclusion, and a successful reunion, could be achieved within only a further thirty-four steps. A set time delay between the required actions could not be avoided, but as the entity considered its progress it could define its mood as

[SATISFACTION]


	3. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

"Fuck you!" the patient screamed, sitting bolt upright in the hospital bed. Her eyes were blinding white in the black face, no iris, no pupil, but her gaze darted wildly. The monitoring contacts for the medical devices had not stuck well to the slick skin surface and ripped free. Alarms went off.

"Ames! Are you all right?" The door banged back into the wall, nearly hitting Panacea in the small space. Glory Girl flew in, a foot above the floor, still in uniform from the fight against Leviathan.

"Glad you left the hinges on this time. Close the door, Vicky," Amy said, with tightly controlled patience as her patient tensed. Glory Girl hovered, turning a little sheepishly to the door and pushing it closed behind her.

"Sorry. I heard a shout," she apologised. "I was worried."

"I'm fine, Vicky," Amy said, not paying much attention to her. She put a restraining hand on her patient's arm, reaching out to calm her with her power by triggering the patient's equivalent of dopamine. She couldn't find one, not sure if the biology was really that alien, or if her concussion was interfering with her power. Rather than take a risk, she resorted to words instead, keeping her tone calm and reassuring. Beside manner wasn't her thing, but getting them sued was the last thing she needed. Carol would never let her live it down.

"Careful. You're in a hospital. How do you feel?" The patient looked at her blankly, and she tried again. "Can you tell me your name? I'm Panacea. I'm a healer." The patient's mouth moved, but no sound came out. The woman was still watching Glory Girl through narrowed eyes, ready for a fight. Amy moved into her line of sight.

"Hey, it's OK. This is just my sister," she said, more soothingly than she felt Vicky merited right now. Either the words or the tone helped, as the unknown cape looked from one to the other and began to relax. Panacea threw an annoyed glance at the literally hovering Glory Girl. "Shouldn't you be…somewhere else." She finished a little lamely, changing her words hastily as she realised where else that would be.

"Dean's family are...They need time with him." Vicky said. Her voice cracked and visibly she pulled herself together visibly with the determination of someone who was going to think about anything else. She landed neatly on her toes, looking round the tiny space with interest. "This looks like a broom closet," she said, peering out of the small window that showed only a wall six feet away.

"It was until I commandeered it." There were no private rooms left, just cubicles, but if anyone saw Panacea here Amy knew she'd be whisked away to heal regardless of the risks. Emptying the broom closet had been a compromise from a hospital already terrified of liability if she aggravated her head wound.

"Is this who mom hit? Does she speak English? What can-" Glory Girl asked, already moving on to the patient. Panacea waved a hand at her to shut up as she started to babble and the patient actually cringed.

"One thing at a time. Yes, and I'm not sure she speaks at all. If you want to help, go and check the records to see if we can find out who she is."

"Mom's doing that now," Glory Girl said, smirking as she leaned against the wall. "It must be the first time she's ever prayed she hit a hero." The cape on the bed was staring at them in incomprehension, and Amy sniggered. After everything that had happened today, anything that released a bit of tension was welcome. Anything to distract her from the thought of Flashbang, Dad, in the bed downstairs. She'd healed his body, but his brain…

"And Aunt Sarah must be fit to be tied!" She forced a laugh and Victoria paled, subdued. Suddenly there was a feeling of something terrible, something she had forgotten. Her sister's next words made it worse..

"I'm sorry, you hadn't heard-"

"Not Aunt Sarah." The bottom dropped out of Amy's world. "I thought-"

"No, but Eric and Uncle Neil…" Vicky's voice trailed off. Amy lowered her head, felt the tears start. She had known, she realised, heard it on the monitoring, but so much of the day was a blur of patient after patient, and then the roof caving in on her and it was so hard to think through the pain in her head. Vicky put a hand on her shoulder, obviously torn between pulling her into a hug and trying not to disturb the patient more. She was already reacting to Amy's distress, her left fist flexing, and Amy raised her head as her power sensed a change.

Something was moving under the woman's skin as the second symbiote stirred. Cross-hatched black tubes were rising from the back of the arm and hand, lengthening forward as they parted, fleshy webbing growing between them like twisted fingers. The shoulder bulged tumourously as a translucent bulge pushed up, white light churning inside it. Thick veins grew under it, solidifying to supporting pipes as it lifted clear of the shoulder, giving the appearance it squatted on hooked legs for all it was part of her. Vicky choked, watching, her mouth open in horror as she stepped back instinctively and crouched for a fight. Her aura flared.

Amy felt the fear centres in the patient's brain spike, and the woman shot back against the headboard, fist closing convulsively. There was a thud as the bed hit the wall. Amy cried out, the bones in her hand shattering in the woman's grip. Immediately the strange cape let go of her just as Glory Girl rocketed forward enraged. Amy threw herself in the way.

"No, Vicky, she didn't mean to! Look at her."

The cape had lifted her own hand, staring at Amy's blood on it in unfeigned horror. She lifted her other hand, turned them over as if she had never seen them before, working the fingers as if they were something entirely new.

"Ow, my fucking hand," Amy swore through gritted teeth, and the thing looked up at them, eyes drifting to Amy's hand. The thing, the monster, bit its lip and held its bloodied, unmutated, hand out. There was an odd range of expressions drifting over the ridged features as it ducked its head, almost apologetically.

"Ames? Oh sh-" Amy turned, keeping her injured hand away from her sister's well-intentioned but non-healing Brute grasp.

"Vicky, get me a bandage. Now." Amy said, as reasonably as she could manage. She sat on the edge of the bed, keeping pressure on the wrist with her other hand as blood dripped. The cape shuffled forward on the bed, holding its hand out more insistently. "What, you want to crush the other one?" she snarked, perhaps a little unfairly, but damn it her hand hurt. Instead it lunged fast, laying slim, clawed, fingers across the wound. Amy yelped in surprise, tried to pull her hand back as the bones snapped back into place. She could feel veins regrowing, skin sealing itself over the cuts as her body repaired itself. It took a few seconds, but the hand looked as good as new.

"Holy - Ames, it's a biotinker," Vicky muttered, and Panacea shook her head, putting her professional mask on as she assessed the repair.

"No, I think it's a genuine healer." Panacea lifted her hand, flexed it. It wasn't even stiff but the fingers tingled with the memory of pain.

"Another healer? Like you?"

"She doesn't use pain relief." She shook her fingers to get the last of the feeling out. "Don't turn her loose on patients you don't want dying of shock."

"But she can heal you."

"Better wait until I'm unconscious," Amy felt oddly calm. It had been one too many shocks for the day and now she was just rolling with things, counting down the minutes until she could find a hospital bed and sleep. The world wasn't blurry anymore, and she was floating in a strange clarity that pain she'd been ignoring had stopped.

"Maybe she'll improve with practice," Glory Girl shrugged and then looked at her more closely. "Ames, your head's stopped bleeding." Amy lifted a hand to the edge of the bandage, felt dried blood but no seeping. Carefully she unpicked the edge of the bandage and lifted it, crumbling away the blood underneath with her fingernail. The skin was smooth, and she found something tangled in her hair, pulling on it and trying not to yelp as it came unstuck.

"My stitches?" she said incredulously, as she looked at the bloody thread. Carefully Amy stood up and took a few steps. Belatedly she realised that the headache really had stopped as well. "I think she fixed the concussion as well. I don't feel dizzy anymore." She looked at Vicky, who stared back with sudden desperate hope. Amy swallowed. "If she can fix brains, then -"

"Dad!" Vicky exclaimed. Amy looked at her, eyes widening, then back at her patient-turned-healer.

"But Carol..." she trailed off, her heart not in it. She had saved so many, but she could not even help her family. If there was even a chance….

"Who cares? If we can get Dad back-" It was Victoria the daughter, not Glory Girl the heroine who was talking, no, who was pleading with Amy. She did not have to, not for this. Dean, Uncle Neil, Cousin Eric. Dad. So many losses. If they could save just one…Amy weakened. "It's not like she can make it worse," Victoria said, not even trying to sound reasonable, and Amy gave way. She always gave way to Vicky. This time it was for a good cause.

"Well, she's safe to move. We should tell the P.R.T." Her heart wasn't in the token protest.

"And they'll want to approve her power and test it and Dad could die," Victoria said, rushing for breath. She reached out to slide hands under the cape, who pulled away. Impatiently Victoria stood back, pointed at the floor in front of her. Expression curious, the cape swung her legs over the edge and stood, testing her weight on the repaired leg. Her head brushed the lights, as Victoria looked up. The woman was taller than they had thought, inhumanly so.

"I can fly up. I'll carry you -" The cape stared at her. Glory Girl held out her arms in a bridle carry and floated. The cape looked sceptical. Amy stood up, and let her sister pick her up. The woman's eyes widened in understanding as Glory Girl floated up and down before she put her sister down. Amy straightened her robes, securing a fresh bandage to her head to dodge questions.

"I'll go up to the long-term wards, check the coast is clear, and get the curtains closed."

"Phone me if it's not."

"Phones are out. If I don't have someone page you in ten minutes fly up to Dad's window and bring her. I'll open it. Just don't been seen." Vicky nodded, reaching out the the cape as Amy opened the window as wide as it could go and peered out. Floating out of the window and across and up to the long-term wards was easy enough, and in the gloom of the remaining clouds and with the external lights knocked out by the tidal wave, even Vicky could manage that undetected with no trouble.

###

Panacea's costume usually gave her something of an advantage in a hospital. Normally, when she spoke, people listened. In the aftermath of the Endbringer attack, that respect had vanished. While she had thought it would be bad, this was worse than she'd expected. People _wanted_ far more than they _listened_ and she had to struggle to avoid being pulled into consults, even with the blood in her hair and the bandage on her face.

As she tried to get to the stairs, she found her way blocked, a clipboard thrust at her here, someone trying to drag her into a surgery there, the bedlam of doctors and nurses and patients and relatives clawing at her sleeve as if that would work the miracle. She gritted her teeth, biting down a shout of 'Fuck you all, my father's dying in here!' knowing the backlash from Carol wasn't worth it. Heroes didn't act that way.

"I have a patient to get to," she tried to shout above the din, but it made it worse as other people realised she was back, and more joined the crowd. There were too many, pressed too tight, for her power to manage them all, for her to concentrate as they crowded her back.

"P.R.T. Emergency!" The shout was right behind her ear, and she jumped as someone grabbed her arm. The crowd quieted as she looked round, and up, to the trooper in full armour. His helmet was off, and she recognised him as one of the many P.R.T. affiliates she had healed. "Panacea, Doctor Green requests immediate support." The hospital code for staff handling a potentially violent situation registered, and she nodded. He took her arm, began to push forward through the crowd by main force as the civilians realised they were not going to get their miracles yet and began to disperse.

"I have a patient I have to get back to," she protested as he guided her through a side door. To her surprise it was not a ward, but a staff room with one occupant, a nurse out cold in a chair.

"Is the patient dying?" the trooper asked, and she shook her head truthfully. Dying patients were easy, but Flashbang was in a coma. "Then you can take a minute for a drink and tell me what you're doing back here." Amy would have refused, knowing she had a deadline, but her legs sat down without her thinking about it. Exhaustion didn't seem to be something their helpful patient could fix. She took the can he offered, flipped the tab and downed it.

"A cape fell onto Carol's car," she said. "Hurt from Leviathan."

"So you brought them back here and patched them up. All fixed?" He stopped, held up his hands in apology. "Sorry, you can't answer that."

"Best not to. Monster capes are tricky, and a fresh trigger..." She grimaced, realising what she might have let slip, and then pushed the worry aside. She didn't know the guy well, didn't know how much it was safe to tell him, but hell he was P.R.T. He'd know soon enough.

"I heard nothing," he said, reassuringly, "but you are heading away from Critical Care."

"I wanted to check on my Dad. So sue me." He nodded, and she suspected from the faint smile he read more into her words than she intended. "Then I'll get back to work."

"Will you be OK getting to the ward?" She thought and nodded. "Good. I'll have a P.R.T. car and driver waiting for you at the rear whenever you're ready to leave."

"Vicky can carry me," she insisted, as the thin man opened the door for her, and then wondered if Carol's car was still drivable after their frantic trip here.

"I think after today, Vicky might want a lift too. It gives you options." He rubbed his head, slipping his helmet back on. "I'll escort you to the stairs. After everything you've done today, you've earned it. Don't forget the P.R.T. are here to support heroes." Panacea smiled. After everything, and it was a big everything – the Endbringer attack, her father in a coma, the roof caving in, the car accident, nearly being mobbed - it was good to be appreciated. She put her game-face on, ready to face the crowd.

"I'll tell Carol. Thank you for your help, Mr. Calvert."


	4. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

The long-term intensive care ward was eerily quiet, the sole exhausted nurse almost asleep at the entry desk. Comatose patients were not a priority when the floors below were already filled with the critically injured, with more arriving every minute. The nurse didn't even notice as Panacea walked through the ward to the corner cubicle where Flashbang lay. Panacea had always like the place for its quiet, one of the few places her power could make no difference at all so no one bothered her – not that she'd ever tell Carol that. Any one she could save she had helped long before they came through these doors.

Flashbang's - Mark's, she corrected herself - cubicle was empty aside from the unmasked, unconscious, hero. She pulled the drapes fully closed, and slipped the window open, listening intently for the sound of footsteps through the deathly quiet. There was nothing aside from the sound of his machine-regulated breathing, echoed by similar machines up and down the cubicles.

Glancing at the medical notes, she lay a hand on his arm to check his injuries and cringed. The coma might be medically induced, but she could see the damage to his brain from oxygen deprivation, damage that he could not recover from. It would be trivially easy for her to fix it, but if she did, what would be left of him? Would his personality survive? Would she resist the urge to go further, to tweak another's personality to suit her? The depression was a illness she could repair. Was she doing the right thing, allowing an unknown cape to heal him instead of breaking her one rule?

"Ames," Vicky whispered, and she jumped. With care, her sister manoeuvred herself and her passenger in through the narrow window, helping the tall cape to stand. The woman looked at Victoria, then at Amy, and then the man in the bed. "Well?" Glory Girl's voice was a rasp. "Heal, do your thing, whatever…" And Amy realised the flaw in their plan. How the hell to explain what they wanted?

The cape looked confused, peered at Mark's face as the machine breathed for him, and looked at Glory Girl. She reached out, cupped Victoria's chin and examined her face closely. This wasn't working.

Amy reached out, touching the woman's arm and used her own power to read the woman's physiology, hoping the healer would detect what she was doing. The cape's eyes narrowed. Then Amy placed a hand on Mark's arm, and guided the cape's hand next to hers. She triggered her own healing, cleared up the start of a lung infection, the beginning of a bedsore, but left the brain aside from a scan and highlight of the injuries.

Sudden understanding filled the woman's alien face. Amy felt the change, his body's repair systems kicking in as it repaired the damage, controlled by another's will. The brain lesions closed, new cells forming and taking the pattern of the old. His immune system flared, ready to fight the infections that Amy had already cured.

"She's like Othala, gifting powers," Amy said in sudden understanding. "He's regenerating himself."

The cape staggered as Amy felt the healing complete. His brain was whole, the damage from spending so long underwater corrected, thought she could still feel the imbalance of clinical depression. She didn't care. She was never going to complain about that again, if it meant he could still walk and talk and think. The cape pulled her hand away, stumbling into Vicky who caught hold of her easily despite her height.

"Is that it?" Vicky asked, offering a shoulder for the cape to lean on. Amy nodded, smiling with relief.

"Yeah. It's all healed. The only thing keeping him under now is the drugs," Amy replied, catching the cape's hand in both of hers. "Thank you. I know you don't understand but…" Amy's attitude switched abruptly from Amy the teenager to Panacea the medic as she scanned her patient. "Vicky she won't be doing any more. Get her back to bed and get her something to eat. I'll go the long way." The scarce resources the cape had rebuilt had gone, virtually depleted, and the churning light on her shoulder had dimmed. Her sister nodded, and as she climbed out of the window, Amy pulled the curtains back to half-open and shut the window behind them.

###

"If a villain has seen Shadow Stalker's identity, we need to transfer Stalker out, for her own safety," Legend instructed, in the medical consultant's office they had borrowed. It was typical that he would come back to the hospital and find the mess of an involuntary unmasking had got even worse. The local P.R.T. Director, Piggot, nodded.

"And her family?" the Regional Director asked.

"Relocation is possible," Legend said, less patiently. In the aftermath of an Endbringer attack relocating families was easy among all the other refugees who would be leaving. This was not something he should be approached about and Piggot finally cut to the heart of her real concerns.

"Relocating her might be easy, but we're going to be down on capes compared to the villains." Legend was struggling tohide his irritation at being dragged into mundane bureaucracy when he had a world to save; a world to save from something he had always thought was a hero

"I fully understand," he said, wishing he could snap at the woman that his concern was saving the world, not just one city. "And we will be moving some capes in to cover the shortfall. If there are any other capes you'd like rotated out, now would probably be the best time to approach the Chief Director. Now if that is everything?" Director Piggot nodded, recognising the dismissal, and walked out. As he went to follow, one of the Brockton Bay capes stopped him by the open door.

"Sir?" He recognised Battery, but was surprised by her odd deference. He'd trained her through the original Wards system, and they knew each other far better than that formality. Still, no matter how much he needed to get down to business, shrugging her off would raise questions and she might have information.

"Yes, Battery?"

"We all saw what happened and-" she paused, her voice slightly awestruck. "What did it feel like when Scion spoke to you?" He blinked. If this was staged, Cauldron had worked fast.

"I-" he was legitimately lost for words. It should have been one of the greatest moments of his life, but his world had fallen apart seconds before with a truth he almost wished he didn't know. Trying to explain the events of the day even following the official line was almost beyond him, but he knew he was visibly stalling in front of the crowd in the passageway, who were rather blatantly listening in. "Humbling," he settled for finally, and the words came easier as his natural charisma re-asserted itself. "I'm still trying to come to terms with it. Once I have, ask me again." Battery smiled, and the gaggle of eavesdroppers broke up. His comment would be shared all over the hospital in minutes.

###

Panacea found herself diverted several times on her way back, pulled in to consult or heal the worst cases. By the time she got back to the room she was guiding herself on the wall to stay upright, stumbling over her feet as she heard Carol talking in the corridor behind her. Ducking down so her mother would not see her, she dodged through a group of nurses and quietly pushed the makeshift-room's door open, sneaking in before her mother could see she had left. Vicky raised her voice to cover the hinges squeaking.

"- remember anything at all?" Vicky was perched, floating lightly, on the side of the bed, holding one of the cape's hands. The cape looked at her with the same wary, broken, stare as before. Gratefully Amy sat down in the chair, noticing there were two empty cups and a vaguely warm soup by the bed.

"Leek soup?" Amy said, taking the untouched cup as Vicky handed it to her.

"It's what they had." Vicky shrugged. "Ames, I think she's a new trigger."

"It might be more than that." Carol stepped into the room, obviously catching Vicky's sentence. Amy relaxed. If there was no shouting, Carol hadn't noticed she had left. "We couldn't find any records of her anywhere. Dragon doesn't have anything matching her on file." She held up a print out with what looked like an inverted omega symbol. "Panacea, can you tell if she has this symbol anywhere on her-" Carol broke off. The tubes on the left hand were retracting, leaving the twisted leathery skin that continued to smooth and fade, baring the pale blue skin below it. In the centre of it, a single symbol remained, black. Carol sighed.

"Well, that makes it a Protectorate matter." Amy stared at her cup, trying to think. She had not detected the tattoo when she scanned the patient, and there was a distinct feel to the ones she had seen before. Was the patient faking it?

"But, mom, why can't she join New Wave? It's not like she can have a hidden identity. And-" Vicky stopped, before her words ran away with her. Eric and Neil had been dead less than a day. It was too soon to be recruiting new members, too soon to know if New Wave would even survive as a group.

"We don't know her, Vicky," Carol said. "Maybe later, once we know how your father is." Amy and Vicky exchanged quick glances, but neither spoke.

"I am sorry," Their mother continued, suddenly professional, reaching passed Vicky to offer her hand to the patient, "I've been very rude. I'm Carol, and you are?"

"I don't think she can speak," Amy said, as the cape looked at the hand blankly.

"Oh. Then can you write?" Carol offered a notepad and pen, but the cape just edged backwards, never taking her eyes off Carol's face. Carol gave up and put them down. "I am so glad this is the Protectorate's problem. Do we even know what her powers are?"

"Healing and Brute," Glory Girl said, pointing to the head of the bed where the cape had backed into it. The metal was bent in a v-shape, cracks running up the drywall where it had indented. "And Changer. She's got weapons under her skin."

"Victoria, find and brief Armsm- Ms. Militia." Carol corrected herself and Amy tried not to flinch. She hadn't heard that Armsmaster was injured. He'd survived the Endbringer but there were always casualties from the fallout from the battle and the rescue work. It would be days before the final count was known. "Amy, get her medical notes in order. We'll cover any medical bills. I don't want the Protectorate claiming we missed something and suing us."

There was a quiet knock on the door, and a nurse opened in gingerly, nearly hitting Carol in the tiny space.

"Mrs. Dallon? Mrs. Dallon, it's about your husband. He's awake, and he's asking for you. Could you come with me?" As Carol froze in shock, Vicky snatched Amy into a hug, floating them inches off the floor. Vicky didn't even notice as her shoulder knocked the thankfully empty shelves to matchwood. Amy looked at the mess and giggled as she hugged her sister back.

"Girls?" Carol was staring at them.

"We're just-I mean-" Vicky said, catching Amy's eye and shutting up. Lamely she brushed a few stray splinters off Amy's shoulders as she put her down.

"It's good news," Amy cut in, halfway between tears and laughter, "finally, some good news!" Carol stared at them for a moment before her face relaxed into a smile.

"Panacea, Glory Girl, remember your conduct reflects on New Wave," she chided quickly, pulling herself together. "Coming?" Vicky bolted out of the window, obviously not remembering that Amy had shut Mark's cubicle window behind them.

Panacea made one final check on the patient, who had lain back on the pillows and closed those disturbingly blank eyes. A touch on the arm reassured Panacea that her patient was simply going to sleep, and she followed Carol down the hall. Someone had to let Vicky back in when they got to the ward.

###

The concrete slab had been the top floor of a car park before Leviathan struck. Now Alexandria settled it over part of the wrecked ground outside the hospital as she landed. Medics rushed onto it to collect the casualties she had flown in, loaded hastily onto her makeshift transport.

"Legend!" she called as she saw him, flying to him at near her top-speed. She was slower than the real Alexandria, but no one would expect Alexandria to rush around the packed casualties. She lowered her voice, pulled him aside as the medics worked. "Costa-Brown called. It's here."

"In the hospital?" he asked, aware of the number of super-powered eavesdroppers who would be focused on him. Even talking around the subject risked parahuman intuition working out things Cauldron did not want known.

"A monster cape or Case 53. Carol Dallon ran it over." He didn't ask for details, rushing inside as she followed. If the message had been passed on by Cauldron, they were sure of their target. The ward chart was visible at the far end of the corridor and he scanned it quickly, the doctor's handwriting giving him more trouble than the distance. The hastily added name at the end for a new room, noting A. Dallon as the attending, drew his eye. He stepped in front of the nearest nurse, catching her attention.

"Where is B. Room 1?" he asked, urgently but trying not to frighten her. "A. Dallon attending?" She shrugged, not knowing, but Alexandria was already at the reception desk, asking the same question. He saw the receptionist's lips move, read her speech, and moved. People got out of his way as he flew up the stairs, shadowed by Alexandria, not caring about the rumours that would start or the explanations and apologies he'd have to give later.

The door flew open under his foot, sending a chair clattering across the floor. Something sat up with a start, and Legend's first impression was that there was a silhouette in the bed. The shape was somewhere between skeletal and female, the face an attractive woman's, over-sharpened to the point that all the lines were edges. It was his first clear look at his enemy but the sense of wrongness, the same reflexive fear, identified it beyond doubt. As he saw her, she'd seen him and was already reacting. Her body flickered, folded in on itself and the bed was empty as his lasers seared it to ash.

"She teleports?" Alexandria said, from behind him. He had other concerns.

"You felt it too?" he demanded.

"Sick fear, just from being near it?" The woman nodded. "Whatever that thing is, it needs to die. Where could it have gone?"

"If it was short range than it might still be in the building."

"The kill order is prepared." Legend grimaced. Alexandria's double might be playing a role, but she could be just as authoritarian as the original. And as arrogant

"Hold off for now. We do containment foam," he ordered.

"Do you think containment foam will work on a teleporter?" She sounded incredulous. His response was the same.

"You'd use live fire in a hospital full of Endbringer survivors?"

"Is this really a time to care about casualties-" Hell, the women even doubled Alexandria's utter lack of ethics. Legend gritted his teeth and interrupted. She was wasting time they didn't have.

"One friendly fire incident with guns and there'll be a panic. You want to try catching a teleporter in a riot?" She backed down, still looking mutinous.

"Understood."

"Once we've flushed her into the open then we take her down hard." He switched to Breaker state, ready to fly. Alexandria pulled the chart from the end of the bed.

"Updated medical notes," she said abruptly.

"Useful. You handle the search. I'll find New Wave."


	5. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

"She's not in the hospital," Alexandria said, as she caught up with Legend. "I've had Costa-Brown put out an alert nationwide for an out-of-control new trigger."

"Do we have a description?" Legend asked, and she smirked under her helmet.

"Better. Dragon managed to isolate a still from the admission security tape. The Chief Director is circulating it." She flipped to a page in the medical notes. "The injuries were Blaster damage. Carol Dallon insisted appeared she came out of nowhere and fell on top of the car." That would match the teleportation they had just seen, and the medical notes were reassuring: the injuries were consistent with his blast, not Leviathan's water attacks. He hadn't attacked an innocent by mistake. "Have you found New Wave? The staff think Panacea left with a concussion earlier - "

"She came back. Flashbang was discharged an hour ago," Legend interrupted, rubbing at his mask with one hand at the unwelcome reminder of the time. The sun would be coming up soon. He had hardly slept in two days, coming straight off the Endbringer fight, while 'Alexandria' was fresh. "I checked on the house. Lady Photon and Laserdream are at Brandish's house, but there's no sign of the Dallons there yet. The P.R.T. have a squad watching and will call in when they show up." It wasn't purely concern over their target. Having the city's best healer out of contact during the aftermath of an Endbringer attack was not ideal. If the P.R.T. didn't call in soon he'd be searching the city. "The hospital are getting me legal access to the records. Anything else?"

"Yes. There was something else on video. You need to see this." With a sinking feeling he let her take his arm, steering him into the security office and ignoring the star-struck security guard.

"There wasn't a camera in the broom closet, but there was one outside. Before the patient woke up, the door was ajar enough to see inside, and it had sound. Watch." She started the footage on one of the screens, a short section of the tape isolated. Legend focused on the video and sat back as it finished. Then he looked down at the medical notes sharply and swallowed.

"Well, isn't that interesting?"

###

"Ames? Ames, wake up!" Amy barely opened her eyes, hardly hearing Vicky. "Amy, Legend's downstairs."

"Ishedyin?" she muttered, still asleep, and pulled the pillow over her face.

"Amy!" Vicky grabbed the pillow away from her, waking her with a start.

"Vicky, not funny." Amy snapped, making a grab for the pillow.

"I'm not joking. He wants to talk to you. It's urgent."

"Shit." Amy scrambled out of bed, staring stupidly at the blood-soaked costume on the floor until Vicky shoved a pair of jeans at her and hissed a warning not to wake Mark. She struggled into them, cursing at the clock that showed she had only had fifteen minutes sleep, as her sister pushed a T-shirt at her. Halfway respectable, she rushed downstairs barefoot.

"-might have come out of nowhere." She heard Carol say as she swung round the door, skidding and clinging on to the frame to keep upright. Vicky caught her shoulder from behind to steady her. Carol glared but Amy's attention was on one of the three most famous parahumans in the world, sitting in her kitchen in front of Carol's computer, and she ignored her. Yeah, Amy knew the lecture by heart, her actions reflected on New Wave, be at her best at all times, and she'd give a damn when it wasn't five-screwit-am.

"Who's dying?" she asked.

"No one," the Triumvirate member said. "We need to speak to you urgently about one of your patients." She blinked, wondering what couldn't wait.

"I can't-"

"We have a judge's order." He held up the paperwork, signed. Amy recognised the emergency order, but she'd seen them very rarely, only when a parahuman was deemed a threat. He sat down, gestured for her to take a seat. She did, nervously, and he opened the medical notes. "It's about the parahuman Brandish hit with her car."

"Isn't she healed?" Amy asked. Carol tensed, but Legend did not react.

"As far as we know. We've reviewed your notes, but there are a few things we need to confirm urgently. Panacea, you said she couldn't talk?"

"That's right. She didn't seem to understand what I was saying."

"Did she say anything when you were in the room?" Legend sounded as serious as he had giving his Endbringer address. Amy thought hard, and shook her head.

"No. Vicky, did you hear anything?" Her sister looked baffled.

"No. I mean, I rushed in when I heard you shout, but she didn't seem to understand anything."

"Glory Girl, are you sure you heard Panacea shout?" Legend asked and she shrugged.

"Yes." Legend actually looked worried. He turned the computer round so she could see the screen.

"Then, Panacea, do you remember this?" Amy looked at the picture, a freeze frame of her sitting by the patient's bed, partly hidden by the broom closet door.

"Yes, I think that was right before Vicky came in."

"Just watch," Legend said and started the footage. For the next 30 seconds the tape showed only a comatose patient, with Amy checking her vitals through a hand lying on her wrist. In the thirtieth second the patient sat bolt upright, opened her mouth, and exclaimed "Fuck you!" in clear English. Amy went pale.

"I didn't-I don't remember that. At all," she stammered. Legend stopped the tape.

"Panacea, she mastered you," he said, as gently as he could, while Amy sat, stunned.

"Dad!" Victoria yelled, flying for the door. Legend was faster, catching her mid-flight before she could leave the room.

"We are reviewing all the tapes," Legend said, loudly enough to capture her attention. "And that is the only discrepancy so far. Don't panic yet." He guided Vicky back to her seat, and sat down himself. "We need to know everything you know about her. It's a matter of national security."

###

"Was that what it looked like on the roof?" Doctor Mother asked, the Contessa watching silently behind her as she held up the still from the hospital. "The video from your helmet shows only light and an indistinct shadow." Costa-Brown took a breath, smoothed her skirt even though it was out of sight of the video chat.

"No. On the roof it was like hands and faces, lots of parts of people drawing down into a single human form. It was sending off impressions. I saw alternate worlds around it, and visions of what Cauldron were doing." Doctor Mother paled. It would have been imperceptible over the video link, but for the unflappable Doctor, any change of expression seemed as loud as a scream. It was the first time Costa-Brown had seen the woman scared.

"Couldn't you have told Legend they were lies?"

"When the first thing he did on leaving was Door straight to the dead Entity and Doormaker let him?" Costa-Brown asked pointedly. "I nearly didn't manage to follow him through in time."

"The first thing he did was go to the garden?" Doctor Mother was as tense as Contessa beside her. "Could Scion know where it is?"

"I don't know if we were tracked. Scion hasn't gone there, and his movements are accounted for, so he may not know. Can you move-"

"No." Doctor Mother shut that hope down immediately. "What exactly did Legend do while he was there?"

"Asked questions about Cauldron and the end of the world. He was flying the whole time, but didn't use other powers or physically interact with the corpse. I can write you a transcript from memory." A shame her helmet camera did not function within Cauldron, but the tight security made that precaution necessary. Now that lack was a liability.

"Please do." Doctor Mother didn't have to say they would cross-reference it with a similar account from Legend: that was basic procedure. "Could it have mastered him?"

"It is possible. If it was at Scion's level, its powers are unknown. If it did, you should consider me and my double both potentially compromised as well." It hurt to say, but Costa-Brown had never flinched from hard truths.

"You're immune."

"In his Breaker state, we thought Legend was." She shook her head. "I don't think he knows everything, but I only just headed him off from the cells."

"Good."

"No. We need to tell Legend about the Case 53s," Costa-Brown said, before Doctor Mother could end the discussion.

"Absolutely not. Our thinkers say he would never understand or accept the experiments."

"And if it tells him while we're fighting it?" Costa-Brown asked emphatically. "What if the omission was deliberate to split the Triumvirate?"

"And what if this is an attempt to split Cauldron by forcing us into telling him?" Doctor Mother answered.

"Why would Scion bother?" Costa-Brown snapped. "He's going to kill the whole of humanity, he might have got the weapon he'll use for it, and right now we have no way to stop him."

"Then we need to find one," Doctor Mother said, still calm, "or find a way to turn his weapon against him."

###

"Where's Eidolon?" Legend asked, pulling out his radio and calling Alexandria on a scrambked channel as he left the house. The Dallons were being loaded into the back of the P.R.T. vans, over Brandish's protests that she could not leave her grieving sister. He hadn't wanted to bother with the double but Costa-Brown was 'unavailable'. Of all the times for the Director to be out of contact. Eidolon had not answered his call either. He pushed down a suspicion he was being frozen out. It wasn't helping.

"Asleep," Alexandria said. "Where you should be." He nearly retorted that she hadn't been at the fight, caught up to himself a moment later to realise that was exactly what she meant before he said something stupid, and sighed. The real her was still up and working on politics somewhere, so his resentment was pointless. "What do you have?"

"Master ability confirmed. She wiped Panacea's memory, and possibly made the healer well-disposed towards her. They allowed an unknown parahuman to work on Flashbang's brain." Alexandria's one word response matched his opinion. As the last van door shut and the convoy started moving he took flight, heading back towards New York. "New Wave are under M/S protocols, but I got her power ratings: Major Brute, Master, and Mover, minor Changer and Striker."

Alexandria swore. "And that's just what they saw. Are those all confirmed? Could she have mastered us into thinking – no, never mind, the teleport was on the tape."

"You're as stressed as I am." He smiled, vaguely amused. "I'll take the hint and go home. I can relieve you in six hours."

"Make it eight. We'll get eyes on her and not engage until you and Eidolon are ready. A six-foot ten woman with black leather skin and a giant tumour on her shoulder should be easy to find."

"Unless she masters people into thinking that's not what she looks like." That was a grim thought, and half an hour later, collapsed into sleep with Arthur, it brought him disturbed dreams.

###

Coil paced in his office deep inside the base. He should be delighted, he knew. He had survived an Endbringer attack with little damage to his resources and paid off a major debt with only one phone call, but what he had overheard in the hospital had him uneasy. Legend and Alexandria's public charge through the building, followed by the exploded bed and the dubious bad trigger announcement about a cape who had been in the hospital for hours? He was not a stupid man, and he recognised a cover-up when he heard one.

Even with the ability to split reality, he had had to keep the reality where he performed his P.R.T. duties. Any others could only be used for information, if he didn't want to get caught. Since he knew he wouldn't keep those lines, he had abused them as far as he dared and what he had learned from that was downright terrifying. In another time and place right now, he was finally asleep at home. If he had not had this reality to act in, he was very sure he wouldn't be sleeping at all.

Two of his mercenaries were settling his pet down in the chair, waking her all too slowly, and scurrying out. If he had not been using a reality for sleep, he'd have wasted one to shoot the pair for taking so long. He took a breath, controlled himself, and kept his back turned as he watched her reflection. With the drugs she was on, the young pre-cog couldn't lie, and he hadn't been present to ask her questions since the Endbringer attack. Now it was urgent, and he couldn't wait longer.

"Chance this city will be completely destroyed before the end of the month." He ignored her resentful glare as she answered.

"99.9%," Her head snapped up, eyes darting frantically as she tried not to think about what she had just said. He continued mercilessly.

"Chance the world ends by the end of the month?"

"100%" He swung the chair round. She sniffed, rubbed her eye with a sleeve, as surprised by the words as he was. He stood up, beginning to pace. It was a bad habit he'd tried to overcome, but it helped him think.

"Chance of anything we do averting it?" he asked emotionlessly.

"0%"

"Chances of escaping it?"

"0%" Dinah had shrunk in her chair, her head in her hands. "Please. It hurts." He laughed bitterly. He was so close to getting everything, and it turned out that everything was going to be taken away. If they could not escape or avert it, then asking about killing or removing the cause was just wasting questions.

"Can we delay it?"

"0%" she said again, muffled. "Please, can I have my candy now?" Couldn't the girl focus on anything important? He nearly snapped at her, recognised darkly that her addiction was his own fault.

"Two more questions, pet," he said, not certain there was any point in asking them. The drugs that killed her headaches and made her more controllable also reduced her to a state where she could not answer questions, but the value of those answers now were limited. "Why not? There's no chance anything I do matters after the end of the month." He said, more to himself, not her.

"12.6%" Her answer was pure reflex, as much a surprise to her as to him. Sheer shock silenced him for a moment. He turned on his heel, meeting her wide eyes from behind his faceless mask. Then he moved with careful purpose, sat down opposite his pet and steepled his fingers in front of him.

They talked. In its final form of twisted realities and percentages it took over an hour to plan. By the end Dinah slumped, sobbing, nearly unconscious in her chair. Then, in the reality he now knew he had to keep, Coil created a series of messages and set a schedule on the computer for their release. He signalled for Creep, his most loyal servant, bound to him beyond any thought of betrayal through money, resources, and the twisted appetites that his master had let him fulfil. Coil shot the man through the head.


End file.
